Podcast

Surface Mining Employee Wins Service to America Medal

10/14/2009
This year's Service to America Medals (Sammies) awards program recognized Office of Surface Mining employee Dr. T. Allan Comp for building volunteer teams that help small towns recover from the damage of unregulated mining. He received his Sammie in the Environment category.

Interior Employee Wins a "Sammie" for Environment Work
October 14, 2009

This is a Podcast from the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Ron Tull: The Service to America Medals or SAMMIES, pay tribute to federal employees who have made significant contributions to our country. This year, for only the second time in the award’s history, a Department of the Interior employee was recognized. Dr. T. Allan Comp of the Office of Surface Mining founded and coordinated the Appalachian Coal Country Watershed Team back in 2001. This volunteer team goes into communities that have suffered environmental degradation from mining and helps citizens do everything from organizing cleanups to applying for federal grants. At first Comp relied on intern volunteers, but soon realized the VISTA program, Volunteers in Service to America, was the answer and program has been growing ever since.

Dr. Comp: “VISTA is more like a domestic Peace Corps than any of those other programs. They can really focus on building the capacity of the groups they serve, so they were really the right answer for the needs of these little coal camps trying to clean up the mess left from pre-regulatory coalmining. I tried to do a little experiment with maybe three positions in Tennessee and then the West Virginia VISTA director caught wind of that from her good friend, who happened to be the Tennessee VISTA Director, and called and said that she wanted in as well. The West Virginia office is now the administrative office for a team that spreads across eight Appalachian coal country states and has 53 VISTAs working actively in those eight states.

Ron Tull:VISTA has been around since 1965, and became part of a family of volunteer groups under the Corporation for National and Community Service in 1993. Dr. Comp says that the administration’s new emphasis on volunteerism and the environment will ensure his program’s continued success.

Dr. Comp: “I think the atmosphere has changed since January. The Secretary has a major youth initiative - the VISTA program fits right into that youth initiative. My office OSM has suddenly discovered that this team, which has been there for eight years growing slowly, is now there and has been building partnerships from these little watershed bases with state abandoned mine land programs, with state departments of natural resources, with state EPA programs, and lots of others. Sort of really creating some serious ability to make things better, and that’s been a really nice feeling to sort of see that enabled by a new Secretary and a new administration.”

Ron Tull: This is the first time the Department of the Interior has had an employee receive a SAMMIE in the environment category and there were two nominees this year. Also nominated in the environment category was Dr. Leslie Holland-Bartels of USGS for her work on the International Polar Bear Science Team which studies the link between Polar Bears and Climate Change.

This has been a Podcast from the U.S. Department of the Interior; I’m Ron Tull, Washington.